A low laugh escapes him.“Still a prick, I see.”
“And you are still fucking breathing because I have not decided otherwise.”
That gets a slight shift from him.A subtle change in posture that tells me he is recalculating.Reassessing the situation, remembering that the man holding the gun is not some amateur he can talk his way around.
Because Lorenzo remembers who I am.What I am.What I have done to men who underestimated me.
I glance once at the far end of the lane, at the recessed doorway where Emery waits, hidden from view.She knows the drill—stay back and let me handle the immediate threat.
It doesn’t mean she is helpless.Far from it.There is a difference.
Emery is not some delicate thing that needs protecting from the ugly realities of the world.She has survived things that would have broken most people, and I know she would stab a man in the throat herself if she had to.That is one of the many reasons I love her.
I don’t say anything to her yet because I still need her out of sight, far enough away in case this goes sideways, so she has time to run.I know Lorenzo didn’t come alone; he’d be fucking stupid if he did.
He lets out a breath through his nose.“You always did have control issues, Matteo.”
“And you always had a talent for saying the wrong fucking thing with a gun to your head.”
His jaw tics.
Good.Let him understand that whatever blood is between us, whatever history lies under our skin, means precisely jack shit if he is here to put Emery in danger.
“I followed a lead,” he says at last.“That’s all.”
“That tells me nothing.”
I stare at him, weighing the tension in his body, the rhythm of his breathing, the set of his shoulders.Lies have texture.They sit differently on a man.Lorenzo is holding something back, but he is not spinning me any polished bullshit either.He’s too controlled for that.And that is what makes him dangerous.
But Lorenzo has always been dangerous, even if some people couldn’t see it back in the day.
I remember him at ten.Small for his age.Skinny in a way that made him look breakable.Sitting on the back steps of my father’s house after his family’s funeral.Refusing to go inside because there were too many strangers in black, pretending they gave a shit about a boy who had just lost everything.
I sat beside him in silence for nearly an hour before he finally spoke.
“Did they suffer?”Three words asked in a voice that had no business coming from a child.Just a flat, clinical question, delivered with the kind of detachment that should have taken decades to learn.
He didn’t want comfort or an adult to pat his head and tell him everything would be okay.He wanted someone to look him in the eye and tell him the truth instead of feeding him bullshit to make him feel better.
So I did.
I didn’t lie to him.I told the truth, that yes, they would have suffered.However, I did not tell him everything because I had heard the orders my father gave his men.I had heard Emery’s father repeat them back with that same cold efficiency he used for everything.
“Keep the boy alive.Kill the rest.”
To this day, Lorenzo doesn’t know that it was my father who killed his entire family.
He doesn’t know that the man who took him in, who gave him a home, and turned him into something dangerous and useful, was, in fact, the same man who ordered his family’s execution.
All because Lorenzo’s father became a threat.That was all it took.One moment of defiance.One decision that made my father question his loyalty, and Lorenzo’s family paid for it.
Lorenzo nodded when I answered his question.He stared at his hands and just sat there, turning grief into something colder.Something he could sharpen into a weapon and use later, when the time was right, to follow the blood trail back to the man who gave the orders.
Now I have no reason to protect my father’s legacy.If Lorenzo is not here to kill me, I can finally tell him the truth.And the more men out there looking for revenge against my father, the better.
Even though I don’t know what godforsaken hole my father is hiding in, he’s still a threat.A ghost with resources and connections.My father does not forgive or forget.He will never let go of what Emery and I did to his precious empire.That kind of defiance does not fade; it festers, and one day he will come for us.And when he does, he will make sure we suffer for it.
Unless I find him first or turn every man with a grudge and a gun loose on him before he can make his move.